


I Know What I Know

by Lily (alyelle)



Category: Dollhouse
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-12
Updated: 2010-09-12
Packaged: 2017-10-11 16:38:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/114445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alyelle/pseuds/Lily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adelle is having a bad day. Topher has a draw of inappropriate starches. This can only end one way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Know What I Know

It was her eyebrow that started it.

Well, no, not her eyebrow exactly. Not at all, in fact. It started with tiny, _imperceptible_ things. Olfactory responses. Hormonal and enzymal shifts. Neurons firing any number of transmitters - serotonin, neurotrophin, oxytocin - at other neurons, an insidious bio-organic war that raged unchecked through his central nervous system. Impulses he could hardly notice, much less control. Novelty causing physiological excitation - that's what they'd said about Victor, wasn't it? That she was just a new element in his environment that his body reacted to.

So instinct caused chemicals, chemicals caused emotional and physical responses, all of them unseen, spat between synapses at a hundred thousandth of a millisecond, with nothing for him to blame or even notice except that singular quirk of her eyebrow and the way her lips shaped the words, "Mr. Dominic. Get this man a refrigerator."

They were very red now, those lips. Her whole face was pink, actually, flushed with a colour that made him long for cotton candy or cherry blossoms, even though he hated cotton candy and couldn't remember having seen cherry blossoms outside of a Japanese film. But her lips were blood red, their usual ruby gloss made darker by the way her teeth had worried at them every time a word eluded her drug-addled brain.

She was doing it now.

"Did you know..." A pause as she thought, grinning mischievously, her teeth scraping slowly over her bottom lip and sending his stomach into knots, "Did you know, Topher - "

"No," he said, because he didn't.

"Shhhh! No, did you know - "

Adelle clambered off the trampoline, almost falling onto the couch where he sat in the process. She wrapped an arm around his shoulders, leaning in conspiratorially to whisper, "You said there were crisps."

"There are! All around us!" He waved his hands expansively. Slightly too expansively, apparently. One hand swished too far to the left and her hair went tumbling from the clip it had been held back in.

"Topher!"

"Sorry?"

She frowned, her bottom lip working its way into a small, put-upon pout. "Do you know how long that takes to do?"

"Ummm… Hours?"

"Hours!" she agreed, crossing her arms and sighing dramatically. "I did say this was a terrible day."

"On the plus side, it looks so pretty now." He picked up a loose curl in each hand and danced them in front of her nose. "See?"

"Hmph."

"Ooh, okay, I know. I'll braid it!"

Adelle's eyes narrowed. "Can you braid?"

"I have a sister." It sounded rather more like a question than an answer, but he slid to one side and patted his knees enthusiastically. "Sit, sit!"

"I'll break your knees."

"On the _floor_. You sit there and - "

"On the floor?"

"Well I have to be higher than you, don't I? Otherwise gravity will pull the braids out."

It seemed perfectly reasonable put like that. She hitched her skirt up slightly, crossed her legs and sat.

* *

  
Something was very wrong.

A lot of things were very wrong, if she thought awfully hard about it. Her hippocampus was being attacked by a memory drug, her head of security was AWOL, also under the influence of said drug, and she was currently sitting between the legs of her House's imprinter, who - for a reason she'd rather _not_ think awfully hard about just now - had no pants on. She was sleeping with an Active, yet every time Topher Brink laid a finger on her, she felt a horrifying and delightful thrum run through her. And if that weren't enough, she was dangerously close to losing the fight with a very strong thought that suggested she run her tongue up the inside of his thigh.

The most wrong thing was none of these, however. The most terrible, dastardly wrong thing was that she had crisps and no drink.

"Stop!" She crawled forward, swinging her legs around underneath her, and grabbed Topher's hands. "We need drinks."

"Like tea?"

"No, too British. I'm sick of being so British. I thought juice. From those little cartons you're always drinking."

"Juice boxes?"

"Yes! Where are they?"

"Wait right - " He jumped over the side of the couch, stuck a hand underneath and closed one eye in concentration. "Ta-da!"

She smiled. "You sound like a magician."

"I _am_ a magician." With a magnanimous smile, he launched into an explanation of science and magic, and how one was the other with less mirrors and more smoke. As he spoke, his fingers flexed and waved in the air.

Adelle stuck the straw in her mouth and flopped back on the rug. Topher's words dissipated around her; nothing he could say about mirrors or science was as fascinating as those fingers. Magician's fingers. The fingers of a pianist, not a scientist.

They were long, delicate, lily-white. Victor's hands had been strong, smooth and reassuring. She could feel them now, the memory all the more vivid through the haze of NR whatever it was called. They were nothing like Topher's hands. His were ethereal, butterfly things. They didn't comfort, they transported, like cool silk and tiny, perfect cups of tea.

That was important. She sat up quickly to tell him before the thought misted away, watched with idle fascination as the room span around her in a whirl of colour for three and a half seconds, and realised too late that she was tipping sideways.

"One too many juice boxes for you," Topher said, nodding wisely as her head came to rest against his thigh. "Better stick to the tea."

She considered protesting. She even considered – very briefly – moving. But one of those delicate, beautiful hands had settled in her hair and begun stroking through the tangles, and the best she could manage was to close her eyes in surrender. And then open them again.

"Your hands," she said slowly, working her way though the sentence like treacle. The word teased the edges of her memory. "They're like… like – what's that thing? Insect."

"Spiders?" He crawled his fingers down from her hair to her shoulders.

"Oh, God, no," she shuddered. "Don't be horrid. Flying insect. Butterflies!"

"Butterflies?"

"Mmmm." She closed her eyes again, smiling. "I like butterflies."

"I sure hope so."

"Why?" She craned her neck, eyeing him curiously.

"Because… there's a butterfly invasion!" Long, lily-pale fingers fled down her sides, tickling along her ribs, under her arms, and even without the drug, she'd have been giggling like a four year old. Barely able to breathe for hysteria, she squirmed away, struggling to her knees. As she fought for balance, she worked her fingers up under his shirt, digging them into his ribs in return. She knew how tickle wars went: you found the sensitive spot – and, judging by his yelping, that was it – and you hoped like hell that they were more ticklish than you were.

Topher, apparently, was very ticklish. The yelping was approaching something quite close to a squeal now, and he'd slipped down flat onto the floor underneath her, although his arms were still wrapped firmly around her.

"Truce," he gasped, "truce!"

She grinned down at him, relaxing her fingers so that they simply lay against his ribcage. A dull thudding sounded in her ears. She felt her brain follow it like a trail of breadcrumbs back to her chest.

Heartbeat. Hers. And fast, very fast. She looked down again, no grin this time, just wide eyes, her last rational thought screaming sensibility and decorum and how completely wrong this was.

His eyes were wider. Unable to help herself, she ran a thumb gently over his cheek.

"Oh," he said, endearingly helpless. Something caught and broke inside her. She leaned forward, her face inches from his.

"Topher." She sounded so quiet, so lost, even to herself.

"It's…" He blinked slowly, as if it to wash the glazed look from his eyes. "It's the NR – cherry blossoms," he finished dreamily. One hand moved from the small of her back, but before she could notice the loss of warmth, it was nestled among the curls that hung down over her shoulders and his lips were pressed irreversibly against her own.

* *

  
"For God's sake, quit calling me ma'am."

Laurence Dominic looked at his feet sheepishly, absently turning the gun she had just given him over and over in his hands. Adelle sighed.

"We got drugged. We behaved like idiot children. It happens, it's over."

He nodded once.

"I'd like you to supervise the Actives' wipes. Make sure nothing… unexpected occurs. Start with Echo."

"Of course, ma- Miss DeWitt. But."

"What?"

"The handlers have reported that Topher isn't in the programming centre. No-one's been able to find him since the drug wore off."

She pinched the bridge of her nose. "Then might I suggest, Mr. Dominic, that you use your considerable influence as head of security to _find him_? Have Ivy start the process in the meantime."

He nodded again, turned on his heel and strode out the door. Adelle waited a long moment before crossing to the bar and pouring herself a drink.

"Dom'll find out, sooner or later." Topher's head peeked around the inner door, his blonde hair still shockingly ruffled. She smiled, setting her drink down on the counter-top. "Sure, his brain's not operating on the same level as some of us, but there're security cameras everywhere. You know he'll - "

One fingertip was all it took to silence him, the slightest of touches against his lips. She slipped her hands around his waist.

"There are no cameras in here, Topher."

**Author's Note:**

> originally archived at [Dreamwidth](http://stowaway.dreamwidth.org/18401.html), September 2010


End file.
